About Liu Ye 刘野

Liu Ye’s paintings are deceptively cheerful in their imagery and colors; beneath their childlike, almost cartoon-like simplicity, the works look critically at serious issues of globalization, economic crisis, and a sense of innocence lost in Mao Zedong’s China. Liu was equally influenced by the propagandistic art of the Cultural Revolution and his father’s illustrations for children’s books, which were ultimately censored and considered a forbidden practice. Liu finally draws inspiration from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Anderson, and the reduced palette of Piet Mondrian; his style is a composite of those influences, and the aesthetics of pulp noir, traditional Chinese landscapes, and Modernism.